Switzerland’s regulator – the Oberaufsichtskommission, or OAK – is to unveil in the coming months a catalogue of minimum risk standards to be applied by all Pensionskassen from next year.
Speaking at the annual BVS conference, the regional supervisory body for the canton of Zurich, André Tapernoux, head of risk management at the OAK, confirmed that the regulator would decide on the standards “over the next few months”.
The introduction of a unified risk-assessment catalogue has been under discussion by pension fund representatives, industry experts and regional supervisory authorities for the last year.
One of the chief proponents has been BVS director Roger Tischhauser, who has argued that regional supervisors need a standard by which to measure Pensionskassen.
At the conference in Zurich, Tapernoux agreed, acknowledging that regional supervisory bodies required “reliable individual figures” for each Pensionskasse.
He said the OAK had therefore concluded it was “useful to make it mandatory for Pensionskassenexperten to calculate certain key figures”.
Tapernoux told IPE the regulator had not yet decided which parameters the new catalogue will include, but he did say they would be taken from existing guidelines issued by the SKPE, the chamber of pension fund experts.
